Exploring new energy for Intermountain West—well retrofits and hydrogen could be key to cleaner energy

Two new papers, each authored by Mohamed Mehana of the Earth and Environmental Sciences division at Los Alamos Nationwide Laboratory, discover the feasibility of effectively retrofitting and clear hydrogen manufacturing from fossil fuels.

“With no action taken, over 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide will leak into the atmosphere annually from the Intermountain West region,” Mehana wrote within the paper. “This volume is the equivalent of 1 million cars’ annual exhausts.”

The Intermountain West area encompasses a number of states, together with Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Given the shared traits of those states, there are answers that may work throughout the area to maneuver towards a net-zero future.

By specializing in place-based approaches to local weather points, the 2 papers map out the financial and logistical path ahead for these two strategies. “To facilitate an energy transitiona holistic understanding of the area’s assets and traits is required,” Mehana mentioned. Each techniques make the most of legacy infrastructure from different vitality sources to decrease the price of clear strategies.

“To speed up this transition within the space, it’s worthwhile to contemplate that fossil energy is a significant contributor to the economic system and the communities,” Mehana defined. “Close proximity would reduce transport costs. Energy-system optimization is critical, and the interdependence of various energy resources is crucial for energy security.”

The primary paper, which discusses effectively retrofits within the Journal of Environmental Managementproposes utilizing legacy effectively bores as storage websites for carbon sequestration. Whereas repurposing outdated wells prices greater than plugging and abandoning them, it prices lower than creating new storage websites. The Intermountain West states include roughly 11% of the drilled oil and fuel wells within the U.S.

The second paper focuses on clear hydrogen manufacturing in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transitionand makes use of the proximity of vitality sources, H₂ storage websites, CO₂ sequestration websites, and excessive energy-demand areas to make clear hydrogen extra attainable. Manufacturing tax credit, which are actually out there for as much as $3 per kilogram, make varied clear hydrogen strategies extra economically possible than ever.